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Success Through Strategy!
Strategy Matters delivers news, tips and strategies for effective communications through traditional and social media.
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Upcoming Presentation:
Strategic content marketing: Building a plan for efficiency and results. Driven by Google's ongoing algorithm changes, communicators are increasingly being driven to provide more, and higher quality, content to their online audiences. That can be a challenge. This session will provide a specific process and relevant resources to get the job done efficiently and cost-effectively.
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Branding "From the Inside, Out": Two Important Considerations
While the entire process of developing employees as effective brand ambassadors is a significant undertaking, we've found that there are two foundational steps that can help organizations get started on the right path toward this ultimate goal.
1) Developing and reaching consensus on your organization's "elevator speech." An elevator speech is a short statement explaining what your organization is all about, framed from the point-of-view (POV) of your external audience that can be delivered quickly and succinctly whenever anyone asks, "What does your organization do?"
Importantly, the statement should be based on a reflection of value from the target audience's perspective-what's important to them. (That's the "outside in" approach mentioned earlier.) Also, importantly, organizational leadership must reach consensus on this elevator pitch. That, alone, can take some time... 2) Once you've achieved consensus, the next step is to test the internal validity of your elevator pitch. In order for your pitch to resonate with the outside world it needs to be an accurate reflection not only of who you wish to be, but also of who you really are. A good way to test the validity of your statement is by gathering input from your employees. But don't just ask them. Consider, instead, the use of the type of projective techniques that are often used in focus groups. These techniques will help you to get a good, qualitative indication of how employees define your organization. Here's how.How have you taken steps, strategically, to ensure that your employees serve as effective brand ambassadors? Recommended Reading:
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Leveraging LinkedIn in Your Job Search
With graduations on the horizon, many are actively engaged in the job search. While hunting for a job, LinkedIn can be your best friend.
LinkedIn offers a great opportunity for job seekers to easily identify potential competition, evaluate what the competition has to offer, and position their own skills and capabilities relative to their competitors. This is exactly the same process that marketers in any industry would follow, and it works just as well when trying to sell yourself to an employer as it does when trying to sell a product or service to a customer. The questions are basically the same: - Who's my target audience? In this case, recruiters, HR professionals and hiring managers
- Who is my competition? In this case, potentially, other professionals with the same background or credentials
- How have my competitors positioned themselves? You can glean this information from their LinkedIn profiles.
- What gaps might there be in the market that I could fill? For example, suppose you're interested in a position as a technology sales rep. You note that your competitors - those who have a sales background in the geographic area that you presume the company is recruiting from - have e less hands-on, practical technology experience than you do. That's a gap and a way you can set yourself apart from your competitors.
So how do you conduct this market research? Simply conduct an advanced people search on LinkedIn. Follow these steps. The next time you're in the market for a job, look beyond simply doing homework on your company or position of choice. Use LinkedIn strategically to learn about your competition. We work with clients to put this same process in place for business development, sales and establishing thought leadership. Let us know how we can help you.
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Today, Anyone Can Be a Publisher!
Digital content is hot and has been a disruptive force for those in the world of traditional marketing and communications. Twenty-first century marketers must now understand, and stay on top of, the trends that can make or break their content delivery. Those trends include everything from what Google is doing to its algorithms, to laws and regulations that determine what they can and can't do, to the evolution of mobile technology, and more.
One big digital impact, and one that comes with definite benefit, is the rapid rise of non-standard publishers. Citizen journalists, including content marketers, of course, now have the ability to produce and distribute their content to the masses without having to rely on the gatekeepers of the old media to get their messages in front of their audiences. While traditional book publishers aren't likely to go away any time soon, and are poised to best leverage the ample benefits that the digital content landscape provides, the world of publishing is definitely shifting and changing rapidly.
Still, just because marketers can be their own publishers, that doesn't mean they should. As Google's movements illustrate, quality is a must. Citizen journalists have yet to prove, fundamentally, that they can be relied upon to supply the same level of accurate, reliable and high-quality content that consumers increasingly demand. In a cluttered media environment, as Google well knows, consumers can be much more selective.
To provide that quality oversight, brands are turning to content management firms, which were once referred to as custom publishing houses. In 2013, NewsCred produced a list of the top content marketing agencies in the country, which included both familiar (Ogilvy & Mather) and digital-age (Digitas) names. Some also are building in-house content management departments, leading to the emergence of a new C-suite title-chief content officer (CMO).
Content truly is king these days. The ability to create, disseminate, evaluate and leverage original, high-quality content is key these days to establishing and maintaining a strong brand identity and presence among identified targeted audiences.
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Featured White Paper
The Evolving Role of Email Marketing: a Three-Part Series
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Volume: 8 - Issue: 6
June 2016 |
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